Why did people start using trenches only in WW1, and not before that during line battles?

Uh yes.

Chinks and Romans dug trenches around their camps.

In defensive battle, the two cunts also utilized earthworks to hamper shit like infantry advances or cavalry charges.

Are you the retard who thought you couldn't sail from Sicily to fucking Sardinia?

>weren't that effective so we're rarely used

Try looking at any major seige during the period

they used trenches in the American civil war.

Didn't it have something to do with the fact that 19th century line battles were all about being able to quickly move around infantry to flank/get a better firing position?

Trenches take a long time to dig, and when you have primarily swords, they're not exactly useful as defensive works versus the amount of time it takes to dig them unless you're going to be there a very long time ala sieges.

With ranged weaponry like guns becoming common they become somewhat useful, but combat is now taking place in open fields so commanders can quickly travel down the line to issue orders. Being inside a trench you're relatively safe, but mobility is shit, and you're also going to have a hard time reloading. What's more, reloading itself takes a really long time, and after you fire the enemy could ride up some grenadiers and throw grenades at you while you're still trying to reload, or just stay out of range and pound your position with artillery.

If you have the time to construct in depth trenches then yeah, that's fine because you can also set your artillery up in some trenches, and they were used defensively a lot, but open battles weremost of the time 99% walking to the enemy and 1% fighting, leaving 0% time to dig and useful trenchwork.

WW1 saw infantry gaining rapid fire rifles that were accurate to ranges never before fathomed in human history. No way could someone run up to your trench while you're racking the bolt in time to lob a grenade, and because of better technology, larger armies, and training digging trenches can be done a lot faster. Mainly, you can just get to a battlefield days before it becomes a battlefield and start digging, you're still using shovels and picks but you have the time to dig before the enemy shows up because of vehicles and massed use of horses to tow men and equipment instead of a few rich guys riding a few horses.

>you're also going to have a hard time reloading.
How?

They were used in American civil war, Balkan wars and Russo-Japanese war in the same manner as they were during WW1.

Sort of.

Trenches were used a lot in the 400BCs and onward in sieges, at least by the Romans. I think the Chinese were using trenches in sieges longer than that.

Trenches were used defensively in lesser forms when longbowmen dominated the battlefield, but it was mostly anti cavalry pits to supplement the anti cavalry stakes and stuff like that. Trenches were still used during sieges a lot, because catapult crews are vulnerable to pointy things but if you dig them a pit to launch rocks from they can pelt a castle all day or until they run out of rocks.

When shot becomes common long reloading times and the difficulty in reloading makes trenches impractical unless they're really big, and still limits you to only a single firing line per trench, so they're just inefficient in that regard. Still used during sieges a lot. Around the 17th century when rifles stop being so bulky and hard to reload you see trenches appear a lot more. Washington attempted to hold New York with a line of trenches, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought with the rebels inside some trenches, the last major battle of the Revolutionary War was Washington and Lafayette infiltraing Cornwallis's trench lines during the night and assaulting the final two trench lines the next day. The Civil War saw even heavier uses of trenches, and while Napoleon's Campaign was a bit too mobile for him to make heavy use of trenches, his opponents often used trenchworks, especially the Russians in the few defensive battles they participated in.

With line warfare the mobility was mostly for the commanders, so they could order men to advance or retreat rapidly, and where to advance or retreat to.

Because reloading shot was an ordeal that required men to take a knee, measure their powder, pack it, load the shot, pack it, set their flint, re-level their weapon, and then fire again. You need knee room and elbow room to do it, which trenches don't provide unless you make them big.

Technically trenches and earthworks are prehistoric. They were some of the first defenses in the first towns along with stockades and wooden fences.

Yes but trenches actually occupied by soldiers for purpose of battle were not, which is the subject of the thread.

Trenches can exist as cover from missile weaponry or as an obstacle for enemies to pass through/over. Most times they existed as both.

I dont get trenches in medieval/ancient combat

Shouldnt being in a hidey hole non-conducive for melee combat. If some cunt came at you with a sword, he literally has the high ground.

Trenches were a thing but when the ww1 patch hit trenches were mandatory due to the shitty meta up until the end of the ww1 patch cycle where some things were shooken up.

They were used for sieges to protect against missile weaponry, to allow siege equipment to get close enough to bombard a castle and to station men close enough to rush to any gap created by said siege equipment.

These sieges lasted weeks and even months, leading to some rather elaborate trenchworks.

Why are you stupid

double nigger.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redoubt

Larger populations, more powerful/centralized national governments, increased mechanization and productivity, nationalism and mass media propaganda all allowed for mass conscription/total economic mobilization.

Trench warfare developed the way it did in WW1 because the entire border could be defended well enough to allow troops to rotate to where the major battles were happening without leaving any point undefended. Railroads also helped facilitate faster movement to prevent either side from being outmaneuvered.

In earlier eras armies weren't large enough and couldn't maneuver fast enough to make trenches worthwhile. If an army dug themselves in too much the enemy would just walk around them or attack somewhere else.

If an area was strategically important enough to be defended it would be defended with large, permanent defensive structures, castles, star forts, etc.

Trench warfare in WW1 was pretty much just the result of countries having so many extra troops and excess material that they could commit significant effort and resources to defending areas that would have been considered strategically worthless 500 years earlier.

Also more accurate/long range/deadly artillery made it harder for infantry to close with the enemy.

Barbed wire surprisingly helped facilitate these conditions. Hindered troop movements significantly

Trenches existed before WW1. We saw their first major use during the Franco Prussian War.

However the excessive use of Trenches came from the combination of every troop having a bolt action rifle and frequent machine guns. There was no effective counter to this and it created a stalemate.